


A Path Chosen

by aionimica



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Ben Solo of Jakku, Dark Rey, Dark Side Rey, F/M, Jakku, Lightsaber Battles, Snoke is dead, Sparring, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-20 15:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13720278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aionimica/pseuds/aionimica
Summary: Rey. Master of the Knights of Ren, a woman of legend and tales, who took her own Master and bent him to her heel. A terror and a blessing swathed in black wraps; his savior from the endless wastes of Jakku who currently wanted nothing but him to fall in line.But Ben Solo wasn’t one to fall easily.-------Ben Solo was left behind on Jakku. It wasn't long before he was found by Rey, Master of the Knights of Ren, who promised him a better life and an inheritance he couldn't ignore.





	A Path Chosen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OccasionallyCreative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/gifts).



> A treat fill for the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology Valentines Day Exchange!! 
> 
> The prompt was: "Kylo Ren used to be known as Ben Solo, but that name’s been swallowed up by the sands of Jakku; his resentment towards his parents swallowed up too. Han and Leia died side by side in battle, which left the Alliance in tatters and allowed the First Order to rise far quicker than anyone could’ve anticipated, finishing what the Empire began. Kylo knows nothing of the growing Resistance. Of a night, a soft voice whispers to him through Jakku’s desert winds. A long way away, a girl without a family swathed in black with hollow dark eyes behind her mask watches the stars. Jakku is where he lives. She calls out to him through the Force, delving into his untapped power. Even if he doesn’t know her, she will find him, one day. The grandson of Darth Vader, the last of his blood, deserves a better fate than the sands of Jakku. (She closes her eyes, willing to forget the time when she was small and screamed against the grip of the Stormtrooper and fought against her Master and the tales he told.) She will give him that better fate."
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!

Ben staggered back as his blow ricocheted off her lightsaber with ease. Sweat ran down his temple as he adjusted his stance and prepared for her next move. His arms screamed in exhaustion, the gnawing churn of the lightsaber almost daring to pull from his grasp as he lined her up in his sights.

 Her.

 Rey. Master of the Knights of Ren, a woman of legend and tales, who took her own Master and bent him to her heel. A terror and a blessing swathed in black wraps; his savior from the endless wastes of Jakku who currently wanted nothing but him to fall in line.

 Ben Solo wasn’t one to fall easily.

 “Why are you doing this?” He dodged her attack rather than any attempt at a parry, his rudimentary control of the Force push getting him just out of range.

 “Because you can be so much more,” Rey said sharply, spinning her blade. The training room was dark, save for the ruby red glow of their lightsabers. The weapon hummed uncomfortably in Ben’s hand and yet, it resonated with a frequency that echoed in the base of his chest.

 It was one of the things she taught him when she first picked him up, how to craft a blade, how to get the crystal to beat in time with you. Her hands were around his as he knelt on the floor of the ship and the crystal cracked and bled as his own hands cracked and bled on the sands. They were alike in that manner, cracked and broken and discarded until they burned bright and red, an ember against the night.

  “You will be more,” she said as she wrenched his blade off to the side, knocking him off balance. Rey wore not much more than her black chest bindings and a pair of tight pants that cut off right above her knees; her usual training ensemble, complete with the black arm wraps that ran from her shoulders to her wrists. Scars dotted her muscled abdomen that illuminated with the right glance of saber light: plasma burns and blaster marks and a single lightsaber scorch that she wore with pride.

She’d caught Ben staring on one of their first days together and she walked over and took his hand and placed it on her hip where the longest one snaked from her back around and down.

 _‘You’ll earn your own if you stay with me_ ,’ she promised.

Little did she know that Ben bore scars of his own that ran deep. Jakku was not a safe place for a child; one didn’t get to his age without the marks to prove it. Scars proved that he wasn’t dead, that he was alive for a moment longer and that the Force hadn’t abandoned him to the universe so quickly.

The Force was a foreign thing to him, a boy left behind on Jakku sands until what he was before was buried and lost to time. He knew enough from stories, enough to know that he was touched by… whatever it was. That he felt drawn in directions he didn’t understand, that there was destiny on each path. And only one path held her, the girl who came out of the sky and picked him up out of the sand, treasuring him like glass forged by lightning.

And yet…

What he knew of Rey was shrouded by elicit storm clouds and shadows that he couldn’t see through. But there was a magnetic pull that kept bringing him to her. Even when they were apart, she was there in his dreams as real as if they were together. When she landed in black ship outside of his hovel, he had smiled and met her with an uncharacteristic abandon.

 _‘You came,’_ he’d said and Rey looked up to him from underneath her black hood with heavy eyes and she’d exhaled like he was the answer to a question she didn’t know how to ask.

But still, there were questions and doubt. Ben looked at her and saw himself in a way he didn’t quite understand. He peered at her and saw what he could be, what he once was, what he would be. And there was doubt.

 “What if I don’t want to be?” he countered as he sidestepped out of her way. There was no way he should be holding his own with her, there was no way he should be able to anticipate her blows. Rey had trained for so much longer, she had her own guard; she had been swaddled in the Force and it’s currents since she was a babe, brought up to a mantle she wasn’t worthy of bearing.

  _‘The Force is strong in your family.’_

 That was when she’d turned those hollow brown eyes to him, hollow eyes flecked with specks of yellow that lit up with something dangerously akin to hope, and told him of his family. Of his grandfather who brought the galaxy to its knees.

 ' _You have that power too_.’

 After that, Ben’s dreams were plagued with a man in black with a scar on his cheek and a woman at his side.

 He woke up when he saw that the face belonged to him. No matter what he saw or the Force in his veins or how he ran out to meet her on the sands of Jakku, it needled under his skin that his path wasn’t set. Despite their days together, no matter how she took him and taught him and stood him at her side as she commanded legions, there was a crossing of paths that loomed in his future, and every time Ben looked at her lips and heard her voice, the path became a little clearer.

 The Force, that ethereal concept that defined so much of who he knew himself to be spasmed and stretched between them as he reached out and pulled on it, letting it guide his actions, guide him to her. His saber swung in arcs identical to hers, pulling on a strength that had long since left his bones and met her attacks, blow for blow. At first, it took her off glance, Rey darting around, adjusting her stance, her leg wraps undoing themselves between her legs.

 But with each passing second, her toying grin faded to a determined snarl, the red lights of the room bleeding into the whites of her eyes. Her hair fell from its tie as she slashed forward, her composure shattered in his presence.

 She landed forward and struck out and the Force drew in on itself like a pin and Ben Solo knew.

 Her blow landed hard against his, the sudden contact overloading the circuits as her saber fell down to his hilt before she regained control. Then it was him against the wall with her blade centimeters from his throat, his own shattered and sparking on the floor.

 “You doubt yourself,” she said softly, her breath heavy and hot against his skin. Ben swallowed, the dread and desire mixing in his blood. Rey leaned into him, the Force holding its breath in a mocking mimicry of Ben himself.

 “There is power here,” she whispered into the shell of his ear. Her saber deactivated and then it was only the two of them breathing in the dark, the floor lights casting a soft glow on their sweaty skin. “I can give it to you. Can you feel it?”

 Oh, he felt it. He’d felt it since the night he shattered a newly fallen TIE alone in the graveyards. He’d felt it the moment he took her hand and joined her side. He’d felt it every day of his life, a bell tolling in the distance, muffled by dense fog. But now the fog lifted and before him was a fork in the path, with a single way to reach the sound. He nodded, his throat tight. “I feel it too.”

 “Then come with me, Ben,” she said and looked up at him, her lips parted. She was younger than he was, but in the Force she was ancient.

  _Kylo_.

 The Force constricted, tight around his mind, the word coming to him in a whisper that only he could hear. It was birthed in the red light, a promise that only the power of the universe could keep or bestow.

  _Kylo, you could be ancient too_.

 “Kylo,” he corrected her, daring to reach out a hand and pull her jaw to him. She acquiesced, the demand and desire that once burdened them turning into pride.

 And her lips were a baptism, a blessing and a curse that bound him. The paths that converged before him narrowed into a single lane lit by fire and the flames licked up his legs as he walked down and it was Rey that led him by the hand towards the endless bell. A funeral and birth. Death and life. A man reborn.

 “Kylo,” she murmured, the name rolling off her tongue, stirring down his spine and the man once known as Ben Solo knew he walked the right path. “Kylo Ren.”

 


End file.
